Architect's legacy in Goshen's Orange County Government Center has its defenders

Sunday

Oct 10, 2010 at 2:00 AM

The roof leaks. It always has. Only four years after the Orange County Government Center in Goshen opened in 1970, the deluge after one storm was so severe that maintenance workers stretched a tarp across the Finance Department office.

BY CHRIS MCKENNA

The roof leaks. It always has. Only four years after the Orange County Government Center in Goshen opened in 1970, the deluge after one storm was so severe that maintenance workers stretched a tarp across the Finance Department office.

Enough already, argues County Executive Ed Diana. He'd like to swing a wrecking ball at the 40-year-old complex on Main Street and take with it, once and for all, the chronic ceiling drips, the inefficient use of space and the giant, energy-wasting windows.

But while debate over the $114.4 million project he proposed as a replacement in August has focused largely on its price, and on whether it would be more prudent to renovate the Government Center and other county facilities, fans of the Government Center's unique design and its famous architect have posed another question.

Does the county have an obligation to preserve the legacy of Paul Rudolph?

The name might not ring many bells today. But in the mid-1960s, when the Orange County Board of Supervisors enlisted the dean of the Yale School of Architecture to design their new building, he was a big name in his field — a pioneer of modernist architecture, engaged then in a style known as brutalism.

"He was like what we call today a 'starchitect,'" says Andrew Dolkart, director of the Historic Preservation Program at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Dolkart says Rudolph belonged to a generation of architects who "broke away from the doctrinaire modernism of the glass towers," often using ridged concrete instead and designing buildings on a grand scale, with almost sculptural, expressionistic shapes.

"At first glance, people see these buildings as massive gray stone structures, but they were also about light and space," Dolkart said.

He recalls touring Rudolph's handiwork in Goshen for the first time and being so dazzled when he wandered into a courtroom that a judge barked at him to sit down.

"I got into the room, and I didn't know what to do, it was so beautiful," Dolkart says.

That's not how many viewers have reacted to Rudolph's stack of concrete cubes. Even before its completion in October 1970, the word "monstrosity" had been bandied about, judging from Times Herald-Record articles from that time.

"Probably a lot of people would have been happier with a steel and glass building," a Rudolph assistant said in an interview before the opening. "Everyone would have liked it. But if you want something like that, don't come to Paul Rudolph."

Today, admirers of an avant-garde designer find themselves in the ironic role of historic preservationists, fighting to protect formerly cutting-edge creations like the Government Center from demolition. Several of the 278 buildings Rudolph finished before his death in 1997 already have come down.

The Paul Rudolph Foundation, a group devoted to promoting and preserving his works, now has two causes in Orange County: Rudolph's Chorley School in Middletown, which is slated for demolition, and the Government Center. Its directors sent county lawmakers a letter last month to rebut Diana's arguments for a new complex and urge them to "embrace your cultural heritage."

Resistance in the Legislature has forced Diana to retreat — if only temporarily — to scaled-back construction plans and an agreement to study several options. But no lawmakers have rushed to defend Paul Rudolph's legacy. "It would not be a good investment to try to save that building," says William Lahey, R-New Windsor, recalling the buckets deployed in the Legislature office to catch dripping water after a storm this month.

Patricia Turner, a Monroe native who now lives in the hamlet of Wallkill, calls the Government Center Orange County's "Picasso" — a challenging artistic work and a valuable part of the county's cultural history.

She remembers feeling mystified when she first saw it. "I happen to think the building is beautiful, and one of the things I like about it is it forces that reaction," she says. "It forces someone to take notice."

cmckenna@th-record.com

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